


Empty Houses

by bigblackdog



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Choking, Fluff, Grimmauld Place, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 30-45 Minutes, Post-War, but really it's more like sub/sub, or something in between
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-07 23:05:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16417745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigblackdog/pseuds/bigblackdog
Summary: Remus,I’ve been at Grimmauld all week. I’m not selling it.I went back to look for the letters. I assumed they had been lost but when I was pardoned I learned they sent my things to my mother at Grimmauld. Turns out she didn’t burn them on sight. Found my leather jacket. All our records were broken. And all our letters were safe. The spells I’d put on the box to keep James and Peter out at Hogwarts were still on. I’d forgotten and all my hair felt out when I opened it.





	Empty Houses

**Author's Note:**

> the prompt was r/s clean out grimmauld after the war, and the prompter listed their likes as, "cool details about grimmauld place, sex in unusual places in grimmauld place, and sirius navigating memories of his family." which is such an excellent prompt, thank you to whoever posted it. 
> 
> and thank you mods! and hypocorism and ebp for the beta reads <3

 [podfic for empty houses](https://soundcloud.com/elise-ayala/empty-houses)

 

_Remus,                                                                                                                                                                   4/11/98_

_I’ve been at Grimmauld all week. I’m not selling it._

_I went back to look for the letters. I assumed they had been lost but when I was pardoned I learned they sent my things to my mother at Grimmauld. Turns out she didn’t burn them on sight. Found my leather jacket. All our records were broken. And all our letters were safe. The spells I’d put on the box to keep James and Peter out at Hogwarts were still on. I’d forgotten and all my hair felt out when I opened it._

_Can you meet for coffee Tuesday morning? Want you to see them._

_Love,_

_Sirius_

***

Remus looks up from his meal, drawn by the movement of Sirius’ coffee cup to his lips and stops, staring at Sirius Black drinking a cup of coffee in a glinting chrome diner at the very end and then some of Diagon Alley. They’re in a booth beside wide street-side windows letting in morning sunlight so bright Remus is squinting. Sirius sitting illuminated by sun-lit windows is a view Remus hasn’t seen since the last time they were here and Sirius was saying the place looked almost as good as his new motorbike and the pies weren’t bad.

Remus wonders if anyone else is staring at this man whose wanted posters once papered every brick on Diagon Alley, and then again, his face on the front page of stacks of newspapers with sensational true stories about the innocent man who escaped both Azkaban and the Veil. Who wouldn’t want to read about someone who had survived so much, especially when he looks like _that_.

They’ve been taking it slow and easy, as slow and easy as they’re able given they’re desperately in love and near frantic to finally be together. Remus has a child now and platonic partner he’s raising that child with and Sirius has a war-torn teenager to patch up. They have themselves to patch up too.

He looks even better than Remus remembers from before the war. Sirius’ eyes look like they’ve been waiting for crows feet to be complete.

“How’s Dora?” Sirius asks, crinkled eyes smiling at Remus above his mug, still lingering by his lips for quick sips.

“Giddy with Fleur. I won’t be surprised when she moves in.”

“And Teddy?”

Remus smiles brightly. “Brilliant. He’s so brilliant, Pads.” Remus can’t resist telling Sirius all the words Teddy is saying now, the little ways he’s invented to ask for something. Remus talks about Teddy all through their meal and Sirius looks indulgently happy.

After Sirius has all but licked his plate clean of pie, he reaches into his leather jacket and pulls out what looks like a matchbox but Remus knows better-- it’s the box they’ve kept their letters in since they were fourteen and it was used mostly to hide prank plans and scribbled-on class notes. Sirius slides it across the table to Remus, squeezing Remus’ fingers briefly as he picks it up. A tiny time capsule, a little packet of history belonging just to them.

He smooths his thumb carefully over the worn lid of the tiny box. “It’s good they brought them to Grimmauld. There was a time--” Remus stops, reaching out to touch Sirius’ hand on the table, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I’m glad we still have them.”

 

 

 

***

_Moony, 17/2/80_

_I’ve been keeping your last letter in my pocket. Sometimes I’ll pat my pocket to hear it crinkle a little. A quiet enough sound for comfort on this stupid mission. We have to be quiet. Makes me think of Grimmauld with all its muffling muggle-proofing spells._

_I used to imagine you and James were at Grimmauld with me. After first year, during the summers, I’d imagine James at the dinner table with me, like he was my real brother, rolling his eyes at something my father would say or I’d go up to the attic to poke around and take James with me. I think a year or two later I started imagining you there. Just me and you. But not at dinner-- I’d wake up in the morning and imagine you were in my bed with me or I’d get into the shower and imagine you watching me. Not as if you were there in the room but from above or outside or something, like if just your sight was in the room watching me shower. I just wanted you watching me. It’s actually how I started to wonder-- did other boys imagine their mates watching them shower? And then when I knew I wanted something from you, then I’d wander around making up a version of you who wanted something from me too. Sometimes it still feels like I’m making it up. Feels unreal that we should love each other so much._

_Ready to come home._

_Padfoot_

 

 

 

***

Sirius stands in the window of the study on the first floor so he'll see Remus as soon as he comes up the steps. He’s nervous even though they've seen each other several times since Sirius found himself in a hospital bed, alive and awake, Remus there with a cup of coffee and a paperback three inches thick. Sirius has had plenty of time to take in Remus' gray hair, remember the sound of his voice as Remus read that three inch thick paperback to him while he recovered, soft and raspy, linger over a few small but warm kisses.

And then Sirius got to see the way Remus looks walking through a park, his shoulders free from the weight of the world and arms full of a bundled up Teddy, the way he looks when Teddy shyly shows Sirius the freckle on his arm, and Sirius shows Teddy the freckle he has on his arm. He's seen Remus across restaurant table tops and he's kept his hands to himself even watching Remus cook dinner for his partner and her girlfriend and their son in their home. Sirius never thought he would see those things.

He hasn't touched Remus though, not yet. Sirius is more patient these days. He's taken the time to meet Remus in parks and cafes with his son, short and sweet little visits where Remus kisses his cheek and holds his hand. Sirius loves these touches, loves the intent behind them.

Sirius stands, deciding suddenly he'll go wait on the stairs by the door; the watching is making his nerves worse. He jogs down the stairs, sitting on the bottom step, facing the door. He is still nervous. Nervous to see Remus. He's tries to talk himself down, thinking of all the things they've done and said, but thinking of all they've poured into each other doesn't make him less nervous, it just makes him clench with the gravity of longing he feels for Remus. A kind of wild and gasping urgency he's always felt for Remus and always tried to tell himself is normal.

Sirius hears the bell and bounds to the door, realizing too late it’s a little too much like Padfoot. Remus confirms this as he opens the door wide; he says nothing, but his eyes twinkle and his mouth twitches and the effect is that Sirius is shoving him as he steps inside.

“I didn’t say a word!” Remus says.

“You didn’t have to,” Sirius says, lightly shoving him again and then pulling him into his arms, wrapping him up tight and close to his body.

“You were thinking it too,” Remus says, words muffled a little in Sirius’ shirt. Remus leans back a little and reaches up with both hands to touch Sirius’ hair. “Your hair is getting longer.”

“You saw me a week ago,” Sirius says, voice softening.

“Not like this though.”

“No. It’s been a while since we saw each other like this.”

The hallway becomes very still. That feverishly warm longing blooms up in Sirius, spilling over, and he wraps his arms tighter around Remus. Even full as he is with wanting, the moment feels suspended, an indefinite period of absolute contentedness. Remus’ body feels indescribably good and he simultaneously wants more and feels satisfied: suspended. Sirius spreads his fingers wide, palms pressing flat against Remus’ back, fingertips pressing into Remus’ skin.

Remus’ body. Sirius thinks about Remus’ body all the time with a tenderness he can never quite communicate, a fervor he can never quite press upon Remus in its intensity and entirety.

 

 

 

***

_Moony                                                                                                                                                                            14/9/79_

_Love when you’re sitting on the couch in your flannels with a book in your hands and five more on the couch, with that look you get writing something. Sometimes when we’re lying down I think about you like this. You feel so good in my arms and I think about all the things you know and the ways you think about them--nothing ever stays put in my head and it seems like you’ve got everything pinned down in yours. Sometimes, holding you, I think about your thoughts filling up your body, all the authors and theories you know filling up your head, and all those wanting words filling you up all the way down to your feet, all those smart arguments you keep to yourself filling up your chest behind your ribs. All those volumes of Proust threaded together with your hair. Think of your whole body full with all your words._

_It’s hard not to think of all the pain in your body too. Sharp in your joints, and skin, and teeth._

_Can’t keep anything in my head sometimes, or it’s full but not in ways that I can say. And holding you and all that you think, and holding your body that holds what you think of me, undeserved and generous thoughts, but I get to hold them._

_Finish your paper so I can suck on your ribs please._

_Sirius_

 

 

 

***

Remus mumbles something into Sirius' shoulder and pulls back a bit, starting as he peers down the hall. "She's gone," he says with quiet awe.

"She's gone," Sirius confirms. It hurt more than Sirius thought it would, and he'd thought it would hurt a lot. But there's comfort in knowing it's over; those interactions in his life are not ongoing.

“How’d you do it?” Remus asks, brushing his hands gently up and down Sirius’ neck, scratching his fingers softly into his hair.

“Blew the whole wall to bits.”

A lovely smile rises up on Remus’ face. “Blew the whole wall up?” he asks, delighted.

“Yep.” Sirius can’t help but smile back, finally finding the humor and triumph of it now that Remus is here. “Few well placed wards and an enthusiastic _Bombarda Maxima_.”

Remus gives Sirius a quick and hard kiss. “You’re brilliant.”

“Mmm,” Sirius hums, pressing Remus closer, harder. “It was very brilliant. Deserving of many kisses.”

Remus laughs. “I want to see your weird house.”

Sirius rubs his hands up and down Remus’ back, pressing hard, and groans. “But you feel so good.”

Remus moves his lips against Sirius’ neck, dry little kisses brushed over his skin again and again.

“I want to do this with you,” Remus says.

Sirius has lost the thread of conversation, “Hmm?”

Remus speaks kisses into Sirius’ neck as he answers. “Want to clean out Grimmauld with you.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

Remus hums for a minute thinking. “I’m looking forward to being a mundane middle aged man whose only problems are the house renovations and the packed trains and the once monthly ravaging beast appearances.”

Sirius scoffs and holds Remus tighter. “Ravaging beast. I’ll show you a ravaging beast.”

“Oh that’s terrible! Your worst ever.”

“Well I’m middle aged now, you know.”

Remus takes a step back but rests his hand on Sirius’ neck, right over where he was kissing, like he’s holding them there for him. “Come on then.”

Sirius leads Remus up the stairs.

“So what have you found in here? Whole civilizations of doxies? Hidden chambers with suspicious stains?”

“Unfortunately both.”

They pass through the hallway where the house elf heads were once mounted. Sirius has ripped down the dirty wallpaper and it already looks much better.

“I’ve been busy. Cleaned out the kitchen again. Remus!” Sirius says excitedly, remembering he’s been dying to tell Remus. “I found an honest to god opium den-- red lamps, gauzy fabric, embroidered floor cushions, the whole thing. It’s off the study. I don’t think I’ll ever get the smell out.”

“Makes sense, with your family’s French background. Maybe _Toujours Pur_ isn’t about blood at all. Maybe it’s about high quality distilled opium.”

Sirius laughs. “Let’s go with that. It sounds marginally better.”

“Where are we going if not the opium den?” Remus asks as they climb another set of stairs.

“Floor cushions aside-- somewhere much better.”

Sirius reaches back for Remus’ hand. Remus has never walked through someone’s home hand in hand before. It’s ridiculous and wonderful.

“I found this place yesterday.”

They stop at a door at the very end of the third floor hallway. Sirius mutters a few French phrases, tapping his wand all around the frame until there’s the sound of something scraping arduously across the door on the other side. Sirius gives a great heave and the door makes a metallic screech as it budges across the floor.

“There’s a metal floor?” Remus asks suspiciously.

“Who knows?” Sirius says. “Door could be solid gold.”

Remus squeezes in through the gap behind Sirius and into a tangle of green vines and broad flat leaves. It’s hard to see the scope of the room beyond the mass of vegetation woven over the door, but easy enough to ascertain there are more plants behind these plants. Watery light is filtering through the foliage and, moving aside a leaf as large as his torso, Remus can see slivers of glass walls and a great domed glass ceiling coated with dust and grime. Remus is nearly pressed up against Sirius’ back and everything feels thick and warm-- the densely tangled life surrounding them, the heavy air they’re breathing.

“Didn’t get very far with it yesterday,” Sirius says apologetically. “Not sure I would prune these back anyway. I kind of like it.”

For a moment Sirius leans his body back into Remus', a heavy press that lasts as long a slow breathe in. Then he ducks down and proceeds on hands and knees underneath the archway of prehistoric plants.

Remus follows and memories crowd in insistently-- Sirius on hands and knees, Sirius on hands and knees in those jeans, maybe those exact jeans, Sirius sneaking under and through the momentarily frozen vines of the Whomping Willow, the way he would linger sometimes in a private game, a personal dare to be there when the vines started swinging again. They were such stupid kids.

There’s a great variety of plants tangled and arched overhead-- delicate orchids, palms, waxy and gleaming green leaves, some are in gigantic pots and some are planted in rows on tables, some trail over others and disappear with no soil in sight.

They emerge from the tunnel into a little clearing of plants in the center of the room underneath the dome. There’s a group of wicker chairs and a couch, their clean, white cushions looking stark and out of place. Sirius stands in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips, shoulders shrugged a little.

“Well, here it is,” he says, feeling not awkward, exactly. “Come here. Why are you standing all the way over there?”

“I’m looking at the room you wanted to show me,” he teases as he walks over anyway. Remus threads his arms through Sirius’, pulls them taut around his body, tucks the loose ends into his jean pockets. 

He leans back to look at Sirius’ face. Alone all afternoon at Grimmauld, a circumstance that from the beginning was understood to be knit through with the promise of sex, a thread slowly pulled since the diner, longer, pulling and pulling and Remus feels the tension of it tugging at his seams, but he can also palpably anticipate the looseness of the unraveling, lying tangled up with Sirius an hour from now slowly and lovingly coaxing out any remaining knots, untangling further with whispers of appreciation, reliving it all with words: _I liked when you…_

“Feels a little weird, doesn't it?” Sirius says, kissing and biting at Remus’ earlobe.

"Yes, but not bad."

"No, not bad."

Remus grabs two fistfuls of Sirius’ long dark hair. “Are these jeans from 1978?” he asks.

“Think I might’ve bought these the summer I moved to James’.”

Sirius licks at Remus’ jaw and he tips his head up, looking up at the glass ceiling of the greenhouse, opaque now with layers and layers of grimy water spots, calcified deposits creeping out from the metal panes.

“Would you have imagined me watching you here? If you’d been here as a teenager?”

“You have the best ideas,” Sirius says, biting lightly at Remus neck now, careful not to leave marks the students Remus tutors will see. “Yeah. Maybe I would’ve come here and imagined my _friend_ Remus watching me lay out on this couch.” He pauses, sucking very softly just below Remus’ ear. “I think I might’ve liked this place if I’d known about it. S’weird to think that I might’ve found something redeeming here.”

“I never would have imagined something like this here.”

Sirius straightens up, sneaking his fingers under the hem of Remus’ sweater instead, always seeking skin. “No, me either. I mean, underpaying Chinese immigrants to run an opulent in-home opium den for you? Definitely the Blacks. This…”

“Do you have any idea who?”

“I think,” Sirius hesitates, he wonders if he just wants it to be Alphard because he can’t confront any redeeming qualities in the rest of them. “Maybe Alphard. He was keen on Herbology. I think he invented a line of herbal cleaning products. Much too pedestrian for my mother. She would have preferred he make high end perfumes from the tears of Muggles.” Sirius is silent for a moment, looking out across the wild vegetation and trying to find with just his fingertips the dimples at Remus’ lower back.

“D’you know he was gay?” Sirius says suddenly.

“No,” Remus says quietly.

“Well. He never exactly said as much, but one Christmas he pulled me aside. The gist of it was that if I was careful I could still live a good life. He meant well.”

“That was probably the only thing someone from his generation could hope for,” Remus says gently.

“Of course, yeah,” Sirius says absently.

The air feels heavier somehow, drawing in on them, blanketing them. Remus likes feeling so enclosed, surrounded and pressed upon by heavy air. Remus’ face feels damp with it, his hands sweaty.

“He had this assistant,” Sirius says, mood changing abruptly, grinning like he’s sharing a private joke with Remus. “Younger bloke who ‘managed his affairs’. He’s probably still alive.”

“Do you think he’d know if the greenhouse was Alphard’s?”

Sirius waves his hand dismissively. “Who knows? Alphard always kept the best parts of himself hidden.”

He bends down and kisses Remus’ cheek, lingering there.

Remus draws closer to Sirius so their bodies are leaning heavily against each other, pressing his cheek into Sirius’ shoulder. He looks at the wall of plants encircling them, the wicker furniture grouped together under the center of the glass dome. Remus lives with a frenetic buzz of anticipation, building and receding only slightly with the full moon, there’s always something _tugging_ at him.

And here it is, within reach, within reach for as long as Remus can anticipate, and Remus finds himself once again enjoying the lingering anticipation of waiting. Drawing out his desperation, pleasant now that its fulfillment is guaranteed. He wants to tease out little touches the whole afternoon— kisses to the cheek, soft hugs, the tingle of sliding his fingers through Sirius’, holding his hand, looking at their hands together, wants to brush Sirius’ hair behind his ear and press quick little kisses to his clothed shoulder. Every daily intimate touch, every single one, slowly slackening the line between them.

 

 

 

***

_Remus,                                                                                                                                                                             8/12/79_

_Walked around all day wanting to put you in my mouth. Just felt crazy with it. Not only your ribs and your soft stomach. I get this feeling sometimes, thinking of something you’ve said, or reading one of your letters, this feeling like I want to swallow it. I’ll sort of imagine your words inside my mouth, or, not just something you’ve said but like, some thought that I think I know exists in your head and fills it up and I want that thought of yours filling up my mouth. And then I can sort of… feel it. I mean, I can actually feel it in my mouth._

_I’ve thought about telling you this. I’ll think about telling you when we’re lying together and you’re whispering things you want to me. But I can’t because I want what you’re saying so much. And I always think I won’t ever really be able to tell you how it feels in my mouth when I’m pretending you’re there, that I won’t be able to really tell you how… how much I like it, I guess. That feeling you there is… important to me. Really important to me._

_I sort of relax my tongue to make a little space and imagine your words filling up that space, and then, the space, your words… there’s a weight. It really feels like I’m holding something in there, and my mouth starts tingling and watering. Sometimes it’s not even things you’ve said, because I can’t hold onto words like you can, but just the idea of all those words and thoughts inside you that you’ve told me, just the whole of them._  
  
_This sounds so bizarre. I don’t know why it’s so important to me that you know the minutia of how my mouth feels when I think about you. It’s not a devouring feeling, it’s not like I want to consume you. I just want to hold you inside my mouth._

_The sum of it all is that I want you so much. Want you so much it feels… The other night when you were whispering to me, calling me a whore and a cockslut, that I’d take it any time, wanted it so badly all the time, gods Remus. It was so good because it’s true. I’m honestly a whore for you. All the time I want you so much, all the time, I’m walking around imagining you’re in my mouth, feeling excessive, just so desperate, so desperate it’s spilling over and I feel a little crazy._

_And when you’re whispering those things to me, two fingers up my arse it’s doesn’t feel like it’s bad. Feels like maybe you want it and it’s ok to want you so much. I’m hoping you’ll do that thing you do, where you put different words to it and make it good. I really am a whore for you. Can I ask you to do that? To turn it into something good? I want it so much Remus. It’s either empty, nothing in my head I can say, or spilling over, but all the time, desperate to swallow you up._  
  
_Sirius_

 

 

 

***

“You know, we’re never going to make much progress on this place if we keep on like this,” Remus says.

Sirius barks out a laugh and takes a couple steps back to lean against the back of the couch and Remus follows, gravitationally drawn forward, he steps between Sirius’ legs and presses himself close.

Remus thinks of being nineteen, overcome with the dizziness of loving Sirius and at their own place for the first time. Long afternoons of sex that Remus can picture with perfect clarity: warm and sunlit, pillows thrown on the floor, sheets long gone, Sirius languid with control, Remus brimming with offering. Long afternoons of Sirius sucking Remus into his mouth.

He brushes his lips at the corner of Sirius’ smile and mumbles the words into his mouth-- “Feel nineteen again--” and Sirius laughs, “Me too,” and tips forward to suck on Remus’ lips.

A long, slow sucking kiss.

Sirius sucks hard on Remus’ bottom lip, sucks it all the way into his mouth and imagines the sharp tugging Remus is feeling, the pinch of pain in Remus’ mouth, gives a little hum of sympathy. Kissing Remus. Sirius could kiss Remus for hours--”Want to tie you up and kiss you for hours. Would you like that Moony? Do you still like that?”

Remus whispers a shaky yes, overwhelmed by the thought.

“You’d want to get off but I’d make you wait. Hold your mouth open for me, love--” Remus drops his jaw so sweetly and tilts up to let Sirius lick deep into his mouth. Sirius always wants more, he wants as much as he can get, Remus’ whole mouth, his whole arsehole, his whole head, he’d lick in as deep as he could. Sirius whimpers again, imagining it, tongue now sliding against Remus’, so wet and desperate.

Remus pulls back and Sirius whines, indignant and Remus lights up, fond in the face of Sirius’ insatiable wanting. He turns Sirius around, whispering sweet things to him-- _I’ve got you, You want it so bad, I know, I’ve got you_ \-- and unbuttons his trousers, pushing his pants down carefully, slowly. Sirius starts shivering, trembling with how good it is to be loved by Remus.

“Want to be such good fuck for you.” Sirius promises, “I’ll be so good. Won’t fuck it up again. I’ll be so good for you.”

Remus conjures lube and slicks up Sirius’ thighs, tugging just this side of sharp on Sirius’ balls before he guides Sirius’ thighs together. He presses both hands to Sirius’ hips as he pushes in between his thighs, so slick it’s messy and dripping because he knows Sirius loves to feel wet and sloppy for him.

“Keep it tight, darling,” Remus murmurs in his ear, low but firm. Sirius presses his thighs together even tighter-- “That’s it, so good for me, such a good fuck for me.” Sirius cries out, nodding fervently.

Remus is still confident with his words in a way Sirius has never been-- confident he’s found the right words, confident words will come when he calls. So brimming with words he can tell Sirius over and over, _so good, such a good slut for me. yeah, you’re such a good cockslut. yes darling, want it so bad all the time_. And the way he says it, with a loving pity. The way he sees Sirius’ desperation, a heavy excess always spilling out, with warmth and wanting, sees what a whore Sirius really is and cherishes it.

Remus slides slow and steady through Sirius’ legs; slick sounds of smacking lube and Sirius feels so wet, so sloppy for it. Remus slides one hand around Sirius’ waist, holding him closer still and Sirius covers Remus’ hand with his own, trying to say _thank you for holding me together_ with the tight grasp of his hand.

Remus’ other hand smoothes across Sirius’ shoulder, tracing a slow path lightly over his collarbone and comes to rest just at the dip below Sirius’ neck, just at the edge of that soft place and presses his thumb into it, hard enough to let Sirius know more is coming. 

Sirius’ breath hitches. Remus' hands on his neck. On the cusp, his excess pitches and floods his mind and he silently begs Remus to do it, to choke him, to cut it off.

Remus slowly slides his hand up and down, so gently, a barely there touch over Sirius’ neck and Sirius _knows_ Remus will, but still he’s pleading-- _choke me, choke me, choke me_.

Then Remus does-- presses his hand firmly into Sirius’ neck-- and everything else is gone. 

Long moments of the quiet relief his pulse and his emptiness. His breath belongs to Remus. Everything belongs to Remus. Sirius is empty of all his reaching, finally empty. He is a body for Remus.

Remus lightens his touch and shifts one hand to Sirius’ cock, the same slow, steady pulls as his cock pushing between Sirius’ legs. He kisses Sirius’ ear and bites it. Sirius feels these things sharply, but without any immediacy-- he’s pleading again with the hand at his neck. “I’ve got you,” Remus says. “I know, I know love, I’ve got you.”

Sirius’ breath hitches again as Remus presses in a little harder this time. Sirius can feel his head pounding with blood, the sound of his breaths is amplified within his head.

Quiet, still, tight for Remus fucking through his legs.

Sirius comes, curling in on himself and holding his hand over Remus’ on his neck, holding him there until his orgasm has ebbed away and he starts, straightening quickly and squeezing his legs together again for Remus. “Shh,” Remus soothes. “Come here, come on.” Remus guides Sirius around the couch and Sirius’ legs feel so loose and tingly he laughs and clutches on to Remus’ hand-- giddy as Remus pulls him down onto the couch.

 

 

 

***

_Dear Remus,                                                                                                                                                       31/5/95_

_You left this morning. Told me in bed this morning that you were ordering me to stay in bed all day, thinking of you, to be good and stay in bed ready for you. Told me I was your whore you were keeping here for when you needed me. Not to worry about a thing because you'd always come back for your good little cockslut. It was perfect Remus. It was. I'm trying to hold on to it, but I've never been as good at holding on to things as you._

_I remember writing letters to you from this place when we were fifteen. Melodramatic shit about feeling suffocated. Not much has changed, has it?_

_Only, I wouldn't say suffocated anymore. That's not what this feels like. Feel so full here, my head is full of all the shit they would say, feel so saturated with their bullshit here. And it spills over and I snap at M. and I'm trying not to Remus, I really am._

_It's hard. Want you to come back and choke the fullness right out of me, nothing to spill over because nothing is there. I love it. I love that you can empty me out with just your hands at my neck. Feel so loved Remus. Feels so good._

_Snuffles_

 

 

 

***

Remus shifts on to his side so he can lean over Sirius and lick around Sirius’ neck. Sirius moans, remembering Remus’ hand there. Laying close on the couch, the heat is encompassing, the wan sunlight filtering in intensified by the dense air and their warm bodies pressed together.

Sirius plucks at Remus’ clothes. “Take these off,” He demands. “You’re wearing a sweater, for fucks’ sake, Remus.”

Remus laughs. “I was busy,” he says, awkwardly shimmying out of his pants and trousers without getting off of Sirius. Sirius loves it and helps peel off Remus’ damp sweater and shirt, when he’s done he sighs in satisfaction at the feeling of touching so much of Remus’ skin. They can’t stop petting each other; Remus has his fingers twisting through Sirius’ hair while Sirius mouths lazily at the bit of Remus’ chest he can reach.

“What else have you found here? What’ve you been doing?” Remus asks quietly, enjoying the close warm space between them.

Sirius slides the arch of his foot slowly over Remus’ calf and hums, thinking. “Well I’ve found enough dust to choke a giant. I ripped down that horrible family tree tapestry and found a much more interesting painting-- sort of Bacchanalian and a little disturbing, like a Bosch. And I found a dressing room-- really small, lots of mirrors, I almost took you there. I bet you’d like getting spanked in there.”

Remus hums in appreciation and presses a kiss to Sirius’ temple.

Sirius hesitates, not nervous, but wanting to get the phrasing right. “And I’ve made up a room for Harry, for whenever he wants it. And I’ve got a room for Teddy. Dora helped me decorate it.”

Remus tears up a little, overwhelmed with love for these two people who have made his life so wonderful, all the love they have for each other and for Teddy. “Christ, I love you. Love you both.”

“Love you too,” Sirius says, as Remus bends down to kiss Sirius’ ear, sending tingly shivers through him.

Sirius pulls Remus over top of him loving the heavy weight of his body and Remus dedicates himself to Sirius’ ear. He sucks on Sirius’ earlobe and licks at the soft spot just behind it, giving Sirius soft little bites that have him whimpering. Remus’ cock is still slick from earlier and he starts rocking lazily into Sirius’ hip.

Sirius traces soft circles down Remus’ spine, his lower back, light touches over and over, the very top of Remus’ crack. He’s finally learned to take his time, he could never quite tease Remus before, so impatient, now he finds he could gently stroke over Remus’ lower back for the whole of the afternoon. He circles and teases until Remus squirms and make an indignant little noise, so Sirius strokes just a bit lower, tracing back up every time. Remus is gasping now in Sirius’ arms.

“Do you still like to beg?” Sirius asks, lightly over Remus’ crack.

Remus nods, hiding his face in Sirius’ hair. “Please,” he says quietly, like he might cry.

“Please what, love? What do you want?”

“Want you inside of me. Please.”

Sirius swipes through some of the lube still between his thighs and pushes two lubed fingers into Remus’ hole. “So soft,” he whispers to Remus. Sirius feels his desperation welling up again but it’s not unwelcome. He wants to be so deep inside Remus, he wants to touch Remus everywhere. He slides his fingers out, enjoying the tight squeeze of Remus’ rim. Remus starts rocking again, sliding his cock over Sirius’ hip and stomach and Sirius stills his fingers.

“Go on, love, fuck yourself on my fingers.”

Remus rocks back and forth, working himself onto Sirius’ fingers, panting quietly, his face still tucked into Sirius’ hair.

Remus’ body becomes rigid as he comes with an intensity alien to Sirius. Remus in his body; a moment that belongs to Remus’ brilliant internal world that Sirius loves, a rushing back into himself and for all that Sirius wants to suck and swallow Remus up, for all that they push and pull into each other, all mixed up, Sirius loves Remus in his body, the whole expanse of him enclosed, warm, blanketed, and the anticipation of plucking at a stitch and following the line wherever. 

 

 

 

***

_Sirius,                                                                                                                                                                      21/11/98_

_I’ve been reading through the letters. After Dora leaves for work and I’ve somehow managed to get Teddy to daycare I have about an hour to myself before my first tutoring lesson. I’ve made a little ritual of it. I put the kettle on and while it’s warming I run my fingers along the folded edges of the letters, stacked so neatly in their box. When the kettle whistles I pick whatever letter my finger was on and lay it out on the counter. It waits for me while I fix up my tea. When I’m all settled in the chair by the window with my tea safely on the ledge I open it up and read._

_I remember them all. I can remember where I was when I was reading them, what I wanted to tell you and what I actually told you, the timeline of that gap lessening. For so long I remembered them in a way that felt diffuse, like it sunk into my body, not a thought so much as something automatically lived, like all the other functions of my body: blood pumping, lungs breathing, Sirius tugging. Now, reading, I’ll see a particular phrase that I catalogued and loved, something you wrote that I memorized and carried around for weeks, and the whole store of you rushes up. I’ll have the urge to write to you, and I have-- pages and pages. I love carrying you around in my mind again, telling and retelling myself all the details of how we’ve loved each other._

_I like to imagine us curled up in a bed-- our bed-- reading them together. Telling each other all the details we already know-- how I can still remember the way your hair smelled the first time we snogged and how I loved your hands moving so carefully, so slowly down to the hem of my sweater, and you’ll tell me how much you love filling up on my words and I’ll tell you about all the muggle movies you’re going to love._

_Love,_

_Remus_


End file.
